I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be holding a full-day workshop, which I’m calling the Inner Productivity Intensive, in the San Francisco Bay Area on Saturday, June 12, 2010.

This will be an intimate, small-group affair, limited to ten people, where we’ll be deeply exploring the challenges each participant is facing in their work, and how mindfulness practices can help them stay focused and inspired in what they do.

Supercharge Your Focus And Motivation In Your Work!

Why do you know what you want to do in your work, but you still don’t do it?

Why do you know you want to work more efficiently, but you end up wasting time on e-mail and social media? Why do you want to write that book or start that business, but it’s never gotten off the ground? Why do you want to change jobs, but you can’t seem to begin your search?

I think we’ve all asked ourselves this kind of question at some point, and the answer often seems maddeningly unclear. What is clear, however, is that the usual organization and time management literature doesn’t shed much light on it.

Yes, there are neat tricks and “hacks” out there for organizing your e-mail, color-coding your folders, and finding the right iPhone apps. But as I think you know from painful experience, these tricks are useless if you aren’t focused and motivated enough to put them into practice.

What Are You Running From?

So how do you find the focus and motivation you’re looking for? In my experience working with people around their productivity issues, to really get what we want out of what we do, the first step is to take a close look at what we’re avoiding.

What do I mean? You’ll see for yourself, I think, if you carefully watch what’s happening when you’re at work, and you’re about to start procrastinating. You’ll notice that, in that “clutch” moment right before you put off a task to do something else, you start having some thought or sensation — some inner experience – that feels uncomfortable or even dangerous to you.

The thought or sensation I’m talking about is different for each of us. For some, it’s tension in their body — maybe a tightness in their neck or shoulders. For others, it’s a painful memory or a worry about the future. Perhaps, for you, it’s something else.

While the inner experience I’m talking about is unique for each person, the way people tend to deal with that experience is pretty much the same. Because it’s scary and uncomfortable, we try to distract ourselves from it — perhaps by checking e-mail, playing Minesweeper, surfing the Web, or something else.

The trouble with this approach is that, when we distract ourselves, we take our attention away from our work. We can’t code that computer program, paint that painting, or do anything else that’s productive when we’re messing around on Facebook.

The Art Of Allowing

As it turns out, there’s a better way to relate to this inner experience: to fully allow it. When you feel that tension, painful memory, or whatever it is coming up, simply hold your attention on your work, keep breathing, relax your body, and allow that experience to pass away on its own. If you’ve done meditation, you probably have some idea what I mean.

The more you practice this, the more comfortable and familiar that experience will become. You’ll start to realize it isn’t as scary as you’d thought. More importantly, you’ll become able to move forward in your work, even in the face of that pesky experience.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Usually, we’ve become so accustomed to running from that troublesome inner experience that we’re no longer aware we’re avoiding it. We just “find ourselves” checking e-mail, playing FreeCell, or whatever our favorite distraction is, totally oblivious to why it’s happening.

The Inner Productivity Intensive is about getting conscious of that difficult inner experience, and developing a new relationship with it that gives you a new sense of purpose and freedom in your work.

What This Workshop Offers You

As you may know, I wrote a book called Inner Productivity: A Mindful Path to Efficiency and Enjoyment in Your Work. Inner Productivity, which Getting Things Done author David Allen calls “a great read and a useful guidebook for turning the daily grind into something much more interesting and engaging,” is all about learning to allow – rather than resist — the thoughts and sensations that tend to disrupt our focus.

In this full-dayworkshop, we put the book’s ideas and techniques into practice. Basing our approach on meditation, yoga and other mindfulness practices that have improved people’s lives for thousands of years, I and my skilled facilitators will help you notice, and transform, the patterns of thinking and behavior holding you back in your work.

You’ll come out of the workshop with an increased ability tofocus on your work, a stronger sense of mission, and a deep-seated knowledge that you’ve got what it takes to face the challenges that arise in what you do.

This workshop is unlike any other seminar on organization or time management. I’ve designed the course to be small — ten people or so — to make sure each person gets the individual attention they need, and the breakthrough they want. This won’t be a lecture — you’ll be diving right into exercises that make you aware of the places where you’re limiting yourself.

I’d recommend this workshop to people who are ready to take a deep look at what’s really holding them back in their work. If that’s what you’re interested in, this course will radically change the way you think about and relate to what you do.

Logistics

The workshop will be on Saturday, June 12, 2010,in San Jose, California,from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Registration for the workshop is $135.00 per person. You’ll receive more information, including directions and the schedule, when you register, which you can do by clicking here.

6 thoughts on Inner Productivity Intensive Workshop

So true about the idea of “what you are avoiding”. Seems to me that if we really want something bad enough, we’ll do what it takes to make it happen. But, if we’re just trying to avoid something, the act of avoiding it creates more of a focus on what is being avoided. Kind of like when you’re driving… you can drive into what you are focusing on. Hey, good luck with your workshop. Congrats on putting this together!

Sounds like a great workshop, Chris. I love the focus on inner before outer. I’ve never been good at the “just do it” mentality. Never worked for me because it was too lopsided. But when I began to understand the deeper archetypal story at work behind my procrastination, things began to change. Which is not to say that I never procrastinate anymore!

Hi Davina — I like that observation — that we can’t really avoid the experience we’re running away from by procrastinating anyway — we can only flounder around between various distractions, hoping that the next one will bring us relief. I think that’s one reason why procrastinating by playing Solitaire or something like that tends to actually feel miserable rather than fun, at least for me and people I’ve talked to.

Hi Patty — yes, I’ve also had the sense that “just do it” is really a form of resistance — it’s like trying to beat the thought or feeling that’s coming up into submission, as opposed to allowing it to exist and, from that place, choosing what you’re going to do next. The “story” is definitely what we’re going to get at in this course.

What a great reminder to allow the uneasy feelings to be. I am thinking in particular of a couple of little things I’ve promised to do for others. Things I’ve succeeded at in the past, but a little part of me is afraid I will not measure up. So… I will not flee the feelings — just let them be, and watch them fade.